Bed, Bath and Beyond
by Ronja-R
Summary: After tucking their children in at night Katniss muses about the relationship she had with her father as a child, and hers and Peeta's relationships with their own kids.


This is just a short one-piece fluff-ish thing I wrote last night at the spur of the moment. I decided to post it as-is without proof-reading or re-working because I felt like doing something simple for a change.  
>Also a much needed break from the Everlark angst in my other stories. Nothing but happily married for them here =)<p>

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><p>It's close to seven in the evening and we're running late with our bed routine. Usually we've got the schedule down to a science but our daughter's bubble bath took much longer than normal tonight. Most nights the kids are in bed by six, partially because we want to teach them to go to bed early so they will get enough rest once they are old enough to go to school and partially because Peeta's early hours as a baker means we don't stay up very late ourselves. If I don't get my alone time with him after the children are asleep I get in a very foul mood.<p>

When it's time to get the kids to bed we each carry a child upstairs and get that child ready for bed and tuck them in. Then we switch, giving each other a kiss as we pass each other by in the hallway, and lull the other child to sleep. Peeta sometimes reads stories to our five year-old daughter and short books to our nearly two years old son. I sing lullabies. Hope insists that I do the singing because Mommy sings much better than Daddy, and she's taught her brother Graham this important fact. I don't think he understands the reason why I should be the one to sing the lullaby instead of Peeta but he insists and he gets his way. It's such a small demand and it's difficult to deny my two babies anything.

Tonight Hope was difficult to get to go to sleep. Peeta gave her a bubble bath, a Thursday evening tradition though it varies which one of us handles the bathing. She loves her baths and usually they make her tired and easy to lull to sleep. Not the case tonight. She was talking and talking and talking, continuously interrupting me during my song. Finally I had to tell her that if she wouldn't let me sing the song to end without interruption I wouldn't sing it at all. She made it through two out of three verses.

At last her sleepiness got the best of her and she drifted off, wrapped around the ridiculously large teddybear Effie sent us when she was born. I swear that damn bear is still larger than she is and she can't carry it around but it has its place in her bed and she throws a fit if she has to go to bed without it. I know the feeling of wanting to wrap myself around something, or in my case someone, and can't begrudge her that. She'll grow out of it when she gets older.

Once she is sleeping I walk inside mine and Peeta's bedroom, finding my husband already on the bed reading a novel. Graham must have been asleep for a while now. Peeta looks up and gives me a smile, the returns his eyes to the book.

"That took long" he comments.

I climb up on the bed and slump down beside him, stealing the book from his hands and slamming it shut, tossing it carelessly on the floor.

"She was pretty riled up from her bath."

"What? She didn't seem any different than normal when I left her."

I think of how she kept talking about her bath, as if it was something out of the ordinary for her to take one, and I smile.

"She thinks you put clouds in her bath."

Peeta looks confused for a moment, then chuckles.

"She asked me what the bubbles were made of. I don't have the faintest idea but I wasn't about to tell her that because if I had I would still be by that tub answering follow-up questions. You know our daughter."

"So you told her they were clouds."

"I decided that if I can't give the scientific answer I might as well go with the artistic one." He frowns. "You think it was a dumb move?"

I shake my head slightly and smile.

"I don't think it's a big deal but I think it's telling how she took it. If I had told her that, she would have taken it as a fun story. When you told her that, she believes you actually took clouds from the sky and put them in her bath." A sentimental feeling comes over me. "I wouldn't be surprised if she credits you with bringing the sun up in the sky in the morning. She was such a Mama's girl until I got pregnant with Graham, now she's Daddy's girl all the way." I lean my head on Peeta's shoulder. "It reminds me of myself when I was little."

"She may be a Daddy's girl but at the end of the day, Mommy's more special" answers Peeta. "Now that you talk about it, she did go on and on during her bath about how she would have to tell you all about it."

I smile slightly, barely listening anymore. I'm caught up thinking about my own childhood and how much I adored my father. After having children of my own I've come to realize that he was probably not as perfect as I remember him to be and no doubt my childhood adulation of him either missed his imperfections or I simply chose to forget about them after he died. All the same, when I think of my father I think of someone I looked up to and admired above everyone else, someone I believed was capable of anything and knew more than anyone else. Peeta can say whatever he wants, I can see in my daughter that same adulation for her father. I love that, very much, and at the same time it frightens me. What if Peeta dies when she is young and she has to suffer through the same kind of hell I went through? What if he lives well into her own children's adulthoods and she has to grow up and realize he's not the perfect miracle man she believes him to be? Either way her illusions are bound to be shattered at some point. I adore my husband and could never wish for a better father to my children but he is human and he is not perfect.

Then again, there's no question what I would prefer. I would much, much rather have her grow up and stop believing her father actually takes clouds from the sky and put them in her bath than to have her lose him. Besides, just because her relationship with him might change and her views of him become less idealized that doesn't mean she won't adore him for as long as she lives. After all, I know his bad sides better than anybody else and I still think he is the best man alive in the world. The mere thought of losing him makes me close to tears.

"Sometimes I really don't know who would suffer the biggest loss if you were to die" I say, more to myself than to Peeta. "Her?" I picture my daughter growing up without the love and support of her father, growing up without his smiles and his kindness and his wonderful heart. "Me?" I've been convinced for as long as this relationship has lasted that I cannot make it through the day without him and having to face the rest of my life without him is incomprehensible. "Him?" My thoughts go to my baby boy and how I want him to grow up to be just like his father and how I can't wait to see him as an adult side by side with Peeta, an older and a younger copy of the man I gave my heart to.

"The one who would lose the most is me" answers Peeta even though my question was rhetorical. I lift my head from his shoulder and look at him with a frown. "If I die young you lose a husband and the children lose a father but I lose a wife, a son and a daughter. Not only will I never get to hold you again, I will also never get to see my children grow up. Not get to comfort them when they are sad, share the happiest times of their lives with them or tell them how proud I am of being their Papa."

I feel myself welling up again and that annoys me so I scowl at him instead.

"Do you have to win every conversation?" I ask.

"My shrew of a wife took my book away so I have to entertain myself somehow" he says in a completely serious tone, only the twinkle in his eyes showing that he's teasing.

"You don't deserve to read a book" I reply.

"Wouldn't have started if you hadn't taken forever singing a lullaby." I give him a mock-serious scowl and he can barely keep from laughing. "Want to fool around?"

"No…" I sigh, still thinking about my father and my childhood which doesn't put me in the mood for being ravished by my husband. "We might as well go to bed, though. I'm tired."

"Can I go back to my book once we're in bed?"

"You're hopeless."

We move off the bed and go through our own bedtime routines. By the time Peeta has gotten to opening a window I am already underneath the covers, shivering slightly. He likes feeling cold when he goes to bed, letting the comforter and me warm him back up. I don't enjoy it quite as much but it's a small price to pay to keep him happy. I like those various quirks that make him Peeta and that almost nobody knows about except for me. In some ways he will always be Panem's Peeta, Hunger Games victor and war hero. I cherish everything about him that belongs only to me, our children and in some cases to Haymitch. People may admire him and look up to him but only those of us who belong to his family know the real Peeta.

"She reminds me so much of you, you know" says Peeta as he gets in to bed next to me, pulling me close. "I was never as energetic as she is, that must have come from you. She's a little spitfire." He kisses the top of my head. "Then there's that beautiful dark hair of hers. Sometimes when I see her running around, laughing, smiling, being happy, I think of you and what you looked like the first time I laid eyes on you. You had a hard childhood and we both suffered through a lot in our teens but when I see the little version of you growing up so carefree and happy there's no question whether it was worth it."

"I feel the same way about Graham" I say. My beautiful little boy with blond curls just like his father's. I like to think that he is a part of Peeta I can protect and shield from everything I wanted to protect Peeta from.

"Graham is more like you, too" says Peeta. "I think they both have your energy and passion."

I smile as I think about the energy my son possesses. He tries his best to keep up with his sister but he hasn't yet learned to coordinate his body the way she can. Hope has taken him under his wing but their relationship is not yet similar to what I had with Prim. In a way I hope it never becomes that way. I had to take on an almost parental role with my sister which I hope my daughter will never be forced to do. She and her brother are playmates and she is his mentor in the ways of the world but she never needs to worry about his physical needs or wellbeing. Not that I think I did with Prim either at that age but I am determined that Hope will never lie awake in her bed worrying where Graham's next meal is going to come from.

I think again of how she talked about the bubble bath her father drew her earlier this evening. She really does adore her father, more than I think she loves me even. During the later stages of my second pregnancy and when Graham was a baby I was very tired and most of my energy was focused on the new little life I had given birth to. Peeta, doting upon his son just as much as he had with his daughter, still had more physical energy to spare and made sure Hope had some quality time with him every day. I'm still the one she runs to when she falls and scrapes her knee but her relationship with her father has grown into something very special.

Peeta says she is a lot like me and I guess there is truth to that. She is, after all, part me and part him. Tonight I begin to think of it in a different way. In my mind I start to feel like she is my chance at a do-over, an energetic dark-haired girl who believes her father knows everything and can do anything but with much better prospects in her life than I had. There are no Hunger Games looming over her and her parents are well off and don't have to slave away in the coal mines or gather weeds in the forest to put food on the table. In a way it starts to feel like through Hope I can process everything I haven't wanted to deal with regarding my own childhood and I can make sure she grows up a happier and more complete person than I ever was.

"Hey" says Peeta, his finger under my chin to turn my face towards his. "What's going through that head of yours?"

I smile slightly and softly kiss his lips.

"You should start letting Hope help you out when you're baking."

"That's what's on your mind?" he questions with a chuckle.

"My father taught me the things he was best at" I say. "You should do the same for our daughter."

"Katniss her childhood is as different from yours as day and night" says Peeta softly, seemingly realizing what thoughts brought me to that comment. "I think it's good instincts to want to bring the best parts of your own childhood into your parenting but I also think we owe it to those kids to grow up in their own way."

"You really do need to win every conversation, don't you?" I ask with a sigh.

"Yes."

I laugh a little and kiss him again. We kiss for a few minutes and then I pull away and settle in, resting my head over his heart the way I love to do at night. His arms are around me and as I drift off to sleep I wonder what Hope and Graham will look back at as adults and point to as the best parts of their childhoods.


End file.
